


A Place Where Nobody Knows

by mn_x



Series: Life During Wartime [3]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Apocafic, Character Death, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-20
Updated: 2014-01-20
Packaged: 2018-01-09 08:52:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1143995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mn_x/pseuds/mn_x
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Part of cofax's Life During Wartime series. Teena Mulder on the eve of the apocalypse</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Place Where Nobody Knows

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [What Good are Notebooks](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1135012) by [cofax](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cofax/pseuds/cofax). 



She has not packed, for there is no place for her to go.

She sits in the middle of the living room floor, in the middle of a messy, carelessly searched room. She clutches three photos in one hand, and they have crumpled in her fist.

One of the photos is of her and Bill in the first year of their marriage. She still hates Bill for handing over Samantha, but she is unable to resist this last gesture, full of that mixture of spitefulness and defiance that has marked her relationships with all the men in her life. When Carl pries the photos from her hand, he will not find one of himself, but of his rival.

Part of her wants to swallow the pills that rest in her medicine cabinet, to slash her wrists--to make another gesture of defiance. She does not want anything from him, especially not his mercy. But he might retaliate for that, as he will not for the picture of Bill, and it will be her son who pays, and her son's partner. And she will not, here at the end, betray her son to this man again.

Her head is bowed, as she waits in silence for him to come to her house for the last time. 

***

When he came to her earlier, she was baking bread, kneading the dough with fingers that were always stiff these days. 

"What do you want with me? I don't know what my son is doing these days, if you're looking for information," she said sullenly.

As she spoke, she searched his face, as she always did when she saw him, as she always searched her son's face. Sideways, from the corner of her eye, though: she will not look at Carl directly, for fear that he will read her thoughts in her face. All these years, and she still doesn't know. Samantha had been clearly his, but Fox has always resembled no one so much as her own father, and so she has spent the last forty years trying to determine whether the similarities between Fox and Bill Mulder were created by genetics or environment, whether the similarities between Fox and Carl are born only out of fear. Like the optical illusion where the outline of the faces is also the outline of the candle between them, her son's face has always blurred before her, and she does not know which is the real picture.

"No," he replied, and she saw that he had been searching her face as well. "I have my own ways of keeping track of Fox." 

He may know the truth--he would have had access to her son's blood during any of Fox's hospital visits--but she could never ask him. Carl would lie if it were convenient for him, or not tell her at all. His answer to her questions about Bill's job, about his job, about the fate of her daughter, had always been that she need not know, that what she did not know wouldn't hurt her. 

And he may not know himself. She has always seen the greed in his eyes in when he spoke of Fox, greed for an image of himself, and he would not risk that by testing Fox's blood. 

She let the dough sit, wiping her hands carelessly with the damp dishrag by the sink, and then wiping down the sink to avoid facing him. "Then why are you here?" 

"Teena. This time, I've come for you."

For a moment, she thought that he had finally gone over the bend and now saw himself as the incarnation of Death. "What are you going on about now?" she asked brusquely. 

He took out that damned eternal pack of cigarettes and lit one, and she moved to a cabinet and pulled out an ashtray on pure automatic pilot. "It won't be safe for you here," he said. "Not with what's going to come. I can bring you to a safe place."

"A safe place from what?" she asked, and plunked the ashtray down in front of him.

"It's time, Teena," he said. "What we've been working to bring about, that time is now."

The time is...

The chair scraped as she pulled it out, numbly, and sat down, her elbows falling hard against the table. Now that she had sat down, he did as well--he had always prided himself on his manners.

"I can bring you to a safe place, with...the other family members. You won't survive, here." He stubbed out the cigarette, lit another.

"What have you brought about?" she demanded. Cursing herself, and her ignorance. Her *willed* ignorance, the questions she had let go unanswered while her husband and her lover had let governments rise and fall.

"A new age," he told her. "But one whose birth pangs will be great, and many will not survive it. But I can protect you." His smile is a lopsided grimace, his teeth stained with yellow. "And I owe the mother of my children that."

"And Fox?" she asked. "Are you taking him to this safe place, too?"

His eyes didn't drop, and the smile remained on his face, as it always had when he had spoken to her of Samantha, when he had refused to tell her the fate of her daughter. "I can't protect him any longer," he said. "I've taken him off the list of people who will be...removed...but he will have to take his own chances with the rest of it."

"No," she blurted, in protest, in anguish.

"Do you think he would take anything from me anyway?"

The wood of the table was smooth beneath her spread hands, and she pressed down to counter the sensation of dizziness. "And Samantha? Will she be in this safe place?"

His silence was her answer.

"No," she said again. 

"I can't protect him," he said. "Not anymore. I can protect you. Come with me, Teena."

She shook her head. "When you're leaving my son to wander a ruined world alone? Or, no, with his partner." And even now, thirty-five years after they had been lovers, she could still read him, could read the flicker of his eyes. "What?" she demanded. "What are you doing to her?"

"I was able to convince them that Mulder is of no importance, that we did not need to waste time killing him. But she--she carries the truth in her body. I can do nothing for her. They will be searching for her."

"And if my son is with her." Her hands drew into fists. She felt the remnants of the sticky, drying dough, flaking off as her hands moved, sending flecks of dough to spot her skirt.

"My influence doesn't stretch so far," he said, and stubbed out the cigarette.

His cheekbone was hard underneath her hand; she dimly registered the crashing sound of her chair. White, and then red, blossomed on his face as she hunched over her hand. "You son of a bitch," she gasped. "You son of a bitch. You tell them to stop searching."

"That's beyond my reach," he said, slowly. 

"You son of a bitch." 

"Don't get hysterical, or I won't take you with me."

The gasp this time was of laughter. Her father might have had that tone when he was telling her to be a good girl or she wouldn't get any ice cream. "Do you think I'll take anything from you? Do you really think I'd take this? To live while the rest of the world is dying, without my children, indebted to you? I don't want anything from you. Except for you to tell them to stop searching for her."

"That's beyond--"

"No part of my life has been beyond your reach for forty years," she snapped. And for her son, and for the memory of the woman who had told her at Bill's grave that her son was still alive, she continued. "You *make* this within your reach. You put that girl in Fox's life, you picked someone intelligent and skeptical and *loyal,* and then you took her like you took my daughter when she was too loyal to him. She's only dangerous to you because you made her that way. Now you take her off whatever list you have her on, and give them a chance."

"And if I do?" he asked. "Are you coming with me, Teena?"

"I want nothing from you," she repeated, bitterly.

"I can make you."

"Do you really want me there?" she asked him. "You could force me to go, there, yes, but do you want me there, reminding you of how you sold out Fox? Do you want me there, telling the other *family members* how we cheated my husband?" She turned back to the counter and pushed her hands into the dough again. 

She heard the chair move, and then he was beside her, although she refused to look up at him. She barely flinched as he reached out and held her chin, turning her face towards him to study it again. Perhaps he also searched for a resemblance to Fox; perhaps only for the girl she had once been.

"You're too old to survive what's going to come, by yourself," he told her. "Too old, and too weak. Only those who are willing to kill and lie and steal will survive without our help, and not many of those."

"And you pride yourself on bringing that world about," she said, low and angry. "Do you want me there for the rest of your life, telling you that you've done wrong?" She pulled her chin away.

She heard him take a last, long drag on his cigarette, and then move to the table to stub it out. And then, saying nothing, he left her house for the last time. 

No, she realized. For the second to last time.

***

She threw the dough away and washed and dried her hands carefully, and then made tea and sat down at her kitchen table to drink it, because there was little else to do. The phone rang and she ignored it, letting the machine pick it up. She would have to call her son, but there was a little time left before--

"Mom? This is Fox. I'm calling because..." Oh, God, her son, her one remaining child, and he *sounded* like a child. She started to get up, to head for the living room and the phone, to warn him, but his voice was going on. "Mom, there's going to be some...bad things happening. It...go to the store and stock up on food, okay? And make sure the locks are secure. There might be riots. There might be a lot of things." She stopped in front of the phone. How had he found out? It didn't matter; he knew. She could not let him try to come and get her. "I'm leaving town now, because the city's not going to be safe. If I can find a safe place, I'll come back and get you. I promise. I love--" Her machine clicked off, and she stared at it.

He was leaving town; that was good. But for him to risk coming to get her...especially since...she closed her eyes. She should call him and tell him not to come, should tell him that it would be futile, but then she would have to tell him why, and that might draw him here. It would be better to let him leave town and get to safety. She let the hand that had reached out for the phone drop.

It would be time soon.

She moved slowly to the bookshelves. The photo album was buried under other books on the bookshelf, and she pulled it out and brushed dust off the corner, moving to sit on the sofa. Samantha's baby pictures; she drew out one where the resemblance to her father was least pronounced and set it on the coffee table.

Samantha, whose father had always been so predictable, once you knew the way his mind worked. 

A picture of Fox as a child, seven years old, eyes gleaming with excitement as he opened his birthday present, the brand new bike horn to go on the bike that had been out in the garage. Even at the end, she could not tell whose child he was, this boy whom she had betrayed in a hundred large and small ways since his birth. Since before his birth, when, out of loneliness and desperation, she had started the affair with her husband's compelling, dangerous co-worker.

She wondered, briefly, if he would send someone else to do this job, but he had always been predictable, and the heroes of the books he read would not have let someone do this for them. He would do it himself, considering this a last, noble gift of mercy and protection. He would not even consider that she had said she wanted nothing from him.

A picture of her and Bill during the first year, when they had still been happy together. This would probably not even register as defiance--she could not afford for it to register as defiance--but she could not keep herself from making the gesture.

Her son had said that he loved her, in the way that he had taken to saying that after Samantha had been taken, as if he knew it would be ignored or refused. Oh, Fox. She hurried to the phone after all, letting the pictures flutter to the coffee table.

Four rings, and his machine picked up. She sat through the message, and said, "Fox? It's your mother. Pick up the phone if you're there, Fox." But the only sound at the other end of the line was whirring, and she realized that he was not going to pick up, although she waited until his machine cut her off.

He had already left, then. It was suddenly unbearable. His cell phone. He would have that with him. What had she done with the number?

It was on a piece of paper here somewhere--she let the pen she kept by the phone fall to the floor as she shoved it aside, and began searching through scraps of paper on the small phone table, in the drawer, and then, frantically, on the bookshelves. She was clumsy in her haste, and small vases and books crashed to the floor. 

She finally stumbled to a halt in the middle of her living room, realizing that it was too late anyway. He needed to get to safety; she should not distract him. Picking up the photos off the coffee table, she lowered herself to the floor. The sofa would be more comfortable, but it faced the door.

She waited in silence, back to the door, head bowed.

***

Carl is still, after all these years, remarkably quiet. If she had not known he was coming, she would not have heard him, as is his intention. He would not have done this earlier because he would have had to face her, and she would have had a moment of knowledge.

He has always told her that what she doesn't know won't hurt her. And if he doesn't see her face, he will be able to believe that he is doing this for her, that since she will not accept life at his hands, the only gift he can grant her is a quiet, painless death. As he might any wounded animal, caught in a trap and snarling a refusal of help to anyone who draws near.

She wonders what he sees as he stands there and looks at her. An aging, white-haired old woman, sitting in the middle of the floor, scalp starting to become pinkly visible through thinning hair. An old woman, looking over memories before the world becomes a violent, dangerous, unsafe place. A place that he is determined to protect her from.

And--although she does not think he admits this to himself--a place where she would be a liability, a reminder of his weakness.

She finds that she cannot keep up this charade. She is not a poor, dumb animal, willing to be put out of its misery; although she does not want to live through what is to come, she would rather that a painless death had come at her own hand. She is old, and weak, but she would have had the courage for that. 

"Just tell me," she whispers to the air in front of her, "even if it's a lie, promise me that they won't be hunted down." 

A pause, and then he says, "They won't be."

"Then do what you came for."

There is silence. Her mouth twists; this was not in his game plan, and he will be petulant and angry because of that, and in need of a way to reassure himself that he is in control of matters. 

She watches her hand, beginning to spot with age, clench tighter on the photos. At the top of the stack, her son smiles at her with trust and delight. "This," she says; she lies, "this I want from you."

Silence. Noise. 

***

She lies in the middle of the living room floor, in the middle of a messy, carelessly searched room, in the middle of a widening pool of blood that stains the wood of the floor. 

Her hand has fallen open. Three crumpled photos lie near her outstretched hand.

Silence.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted 2000. Thanks to cofax for beta and letting me play in the universe.


End file.
